14 Selected Poems of Liao Weitang 2020
Kafka said:The tension between man and his time is the primary problem of all art. Every painter, writer, playwright and poet is bound to explore this issue. The poet Liao Weitang’s poems for the year Gengzi are sad and sorrowful, but also reflective, anatomical and resistant to the times, and his torch-like gaze on the present situation of man. 2020 is a special year, perhaps the beginning of a new era, a year in which the poet feels more than ever the “presence” of poetry, the present meaning of poetry. In this year, the poet is more than ever aware of the “presence” of poetry, the current meaning of poetry – its concern for reality, its respect for justice, its inquiry into conscience, and its reflection on itself. This group of poems by Liao Weitang tastes bitter, but it is really like salt, containing the situation of the mind of individuals facing the monster-like reality, and the arm we hold high to the sky of this era.
Photography / Liao Weitang
Chu, Resignation
I’d rather still listen to the stale
slow “Christmas Eve
instead of taking the high-speed train to quickly slide into the New Year
After buying the last box of N95 masks
I gave up ten of them, right as conscience
I ran away from myself in haste and pretended to have a soul
Floating and floating on both sides of the Yangtze River
Although there are three households in Chu, no, Chu are all retail households
Who are the debtors and who are the debtors in this scattered land?
The one who stumbled in the Spring Festival with illness
If it is not you and me, who will it be?
If the cell phone is disconnected at the provincial border
And there is no Jesus wandering in the gas station
Who showed Qu Yuan the way above the pale yellow water?
Highway intersection
The one who turned off the navigation and idled his engine
The one who turned off his navigation and idled his engine
2020.1.23.
Forbidden Book
If a child is made an orphan
That means we are all orphans
When the train derails
Mothers, please be prepared
When the tunnel is long, mothers prepare
When we meet, we have only one thing to rely on: the breast
When we part, we don’t hesitate: the ocean
The wilderness has never looked so much like this moment
A forbidden book
With the direction of the rebels written all over it
And the dead are thickening like a spring snow
And new footprints are added and erased
2020.2.4.
In memory of an ophthalmologist
He was in a
huge cataractous eyeball
suffocated. What we thought was snow
he knew was deliberate to keep us from seeing his
blindness contagion.
He handed out the scalpel in the gray haze. We
just today received
A cut in the larynx, whistle.
Thwart an opening in a dead bone, blow the whistle.
Cut a window in a ward, whistle.
Cut a bloody path in the siege, we blow the whistle.
Only the rust of fingers against both lungs
We know we have grown into an iron house
Like a voluminous ellipsis
Only he deliberately chisels a comma
to give the elephant in the room a moment’s pause.
What’s next for us?
What’s next?
Only with the loss of an ophthalmologist
We realize we were snow blind long before the avalanche
The doctor said: an eye for an eye
Doctors never say: the road to the eye.
2020.2.6-8.
Dedicated to Dr. Li Wenliang
Note to travelers
For there have been those who received the guest travelers, who did not know that they received angels. (Heb. 13:1-2)
We receive you with the whole earth
–We have only this bed with many holes
of a marching bed
We do not know that you are between the lice and the coins
Hallelujah!
Like not knowing the Madonna between love and the Black Death
Our old waiter, Francis of Assisi
Washed your feet in a room as dark and vast as the wilderness
Carefully put away
The graves in your trunk are millions
Fold your cloak like a blizzard
Pour out of your shoes a flock of steel mockingbirds
Hallelujah!
You will be able to identify the babies and bats in the belly of a fallen horse
As they swarm out
Lay your prayers upon them with hymns
Our beams are tilted and out of tune
Our keys are damp as a pile of straw
Our churches are smoke, our slaughterhouses are fog
Fumbling with the knife
Cleaning the knife and blessing it
Hallelujah, we are the ones who set fire to the waterfall
Rainbows, Hoso and Indians are our delicacies
Please put away the funeral advertisements shoved under the door
Don’t try to call the numbers next to the bright pictures
We don’t have a wake-up call tomorrow morning
But we do have a wake-up call
Misty, misty call the thorns that approach the world
They’ll scratch the blood on your white coat
So as to show you the map that God has forgotten
2020.3.29.
The Hanged Man
I thought I would find our tombstone at the border
The number on that marker tampered with our names
I thought I could retrieve our ashes from the killer
Then I found that the murderer had already camped on top of the urn
Or a young woman knocking on the door with a flower petal in her hand
A sound, a tongue of fire kissing passionately in the spring shade
Life as a pleasure seeker is always tireless
Death as a vagabond who misses the wedding feast
2020.4.12.
Youth Day
Even if the word “freedom
is a fence
Are all fences
Young people are still afraid of
These two words
modestly: Meida
Just fine
2020.5.4.
The nameless yellow raincoat
(after cohen)
It’s seven o’clock in the evening, and the summer is nearing freezing.
I can’t write to you, I dare not ask if you remember Hong Kong
Queen’s Road is ringing with crickets all night long, Central is on fire
But I love the mountains, the smoke and the umbrellas of my former overseas residence.
I heard that you have seeped your life deep into the desert
You are not already wanting for nothing in life
How I wish you could be something that we are attached to
The EMT came back with a picture of you.
She said you gave it to her when you decided to leave that night.
Have you really sorted out everything Gale?
The last time I saw you, you looked much younger.
Your famous yellow raincoat was frayed at the heart.
You used to go to the pier and wait for every ferry.
People came and went, but the Hong Kong you were waiting for never showed up…
I mean, what you had in mind for us
So, you just handed us a tiny blade in your life.
And when we get home we still aren’t anyone’s wounds ……
I seem to see you again with a light between your teeth
I seem to see us again as a rainstorm, burning for the yellow raincoat
2020.6.15.
The little divorce
In fact, the one who is not named Liao Weitang is more like me.
The one who didn’t see the solar eclipse is closer to the sun today.
When recently blossoms have been opening in the night in a foreign country
I can’t bear to ask about how her flesh and blood are separated in Hong Kong.
Her fragrance and hurt farewell how like the sonic hour from the midnight separation
A moment like a vertical cat, a moment to say goodbye to her husband and children.
She left heaven with a return envelope.
In fact, the parting on earth has just begun
We wade deep and shallow into the bone tomb of the peach blossom.
Take a horse, a lover’s horse closer to the longitudinal valley of Hong Kong
Its panting is closer to the petals of the drawn blade.
Light messy painting a juvenile tour. Our Qingming Shanghe Tu
Our lost laughing good hell.
2020.6.29.
Night Prayer
Blackbird you have chirped please chirp again
The night can no longer be divided but the light still breaks the bank
If you can, please swallow the bitter water of this thorny fruit of Hong Kong
Then die again in splendor
Please open the door of Shantung Street once more
The love of Prince Edward Road, please do it again
The blood of Wanchai will flow once more
I will keep the maiden who died, this time
The spinning coin, please don’t drop “Gong” or “Word
2020.7.19.
Prophecy
Some people die once and live a second time in secret
In this noisy world they don’t panic at all
Can you swallow such a person?
He will not easily erect a spear made of his old bones
What you can swallow is the dust and smoke of corruption on this earth
When the train starts again, you roll up your snakeskin coat
Suddenly, you find that the snakeskin has turned to powder
You’re a naked worm, transparent and nearly opaque
Unlike you, I’ve died once and lived a second time in secret
I don’t panic at all in this world of silence
2020.8.10.
To the snow
It’s been a long time.
Everything looks like you
Especially those fires on the roadside that never end
The one that wanders and piles up
I’m the one who hovered, piled up, and spun up half a meter.
Send me a mirror
Send me a sharp lake
And preferably a fox
Through its death to reach
The birch forest
It’s okay if there’s none, we’re both empty-handed
Just like the year we first met
As soon as we opened our mouths, the white air lingered on our lips
When we kissed, it hurt
When we had nothing, we were overjoyed
2020.9.23.
Night shift
Are you ready for the night shift?
If the additional street lights are not for
To light up the night but only
To hammer nails into your wrists with light
You’ve checked the brakes
But don’t forget the throttle
You’ve suspended your passengers because
You’re already overloaded with the weight of silence
So will you be a Transformer
Or do you want to be the Transformers, or do you want to dream on top of a skyscraper holding a lightning rod
Mr. Go?
Yes, you have a tuxedo.
Just fluttering on the front of the car
Ragged like an old embassy flag
Stars and stripes
All worn by the rusting wind
So are you ready for the night shift?
Those kids are standing on the cliff hitting the ball
You’re not the only catcher
Those kids spilling gold all over the blackfish’s giant belly
You open your lunchbox
Become a comet
Since you’re the speed of light
Dust
You must be the speed of light
Morning Sea
2020.11.13.
sadness and death
I still haven’t let go of last August
I haven’t let go of the silent torrent of Causeway Bay
Still wearing the white shirt stained with the sweat of tens of thousands of people
The sewage in my shoes still burns my feet
We wait to become a sacrifice, in the bone awake to explain the pain
The snow that has fallen is old and hard and seems to have waited for ten or a hundred years
2014, 1997, 1898, 1279
They cut us down immeasurably
They fall together like dead cottonwoods, or red fire ants
We then pick up the frozen bones in the sea of fire
We then retrieve our old lover in the frozen lake
She disappeared last August
She poured out the rose salt on the path of the Exodus
She kissed the sword on the ship of fools
2020.11.30.
Remembering Hong Kong on All Hallows’ Eve
A hundred ghosts blushing
In Lan Kwai Fong
When those who call themselves human
Tuck the swollen horns back into the police cap
A hundred ghosts blush in shame
Not being able to go to hell to see the real people
And the book of life and death is melting like tears
Tears that can’t be stopped
The map has lost its streets
The name of the wilderness is left
Last year’s beheadings, this year’s flowers roar
This good hell is as real as it gets
The old country swallowed the crow pills
The painter’s brute waist gave birth to a snake
The old woman who cooked eggs in the back alley with the fire and water stove
is my lover
The one who painted my eyes under the gooseneck bridge instead
The sad face on this mask is as vivid as it can be
Selling one more smoke sight to buy one more charm
The black cat in the pelvis has been dead for years
The young woman who is my lover
And the index is as red as the blood of her dress
In her breasts up and pregnant
The kitchen of a hundred ghosts blushing
Song Wangtai, Song Wangtai
The city gates on both sides of the yin and yang are open
Are they open? MTR is turning off the lights to get in
We can’t get in. Who will pick up this little girl?
We’re the ones who threw away the matches.
It’s the matches that sold the little girl
All the ghosts are blushing
When those who call themselves human
Tucked the tail of the red pain into the price
All the demons are ashamed
Failing to rebuild hell to grow real flowers
2020.11.1.
Liao Wai-tong
LIAO Wai-tong is a poet, writer and photographer from Hong Kong. He has won the Hong Kong Youth Literature Award, the Hong Kong Chinese Literature Award, the Taiwan China Times Literary Award, the United Press Literary Award and the Hong Kong Literature Biennial Award. He has published more than a dozen poetry collections in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, including Eight Feet of Snow, Half a Book of Ghost Language, Spring Marigold, Cherry and King Kong, and All the Shining Will Never Go Out.
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